


Tallulah Falls

by lindmere



Series: Geography [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 11:55:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindmere/pseuds/lindmere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern day AU. Jim Kirk is an actor whose latest picture is filming in the North Georgia mountains when a whack on the head from a very prescient crate sends him into McCoy's emergency room. Jim instantly likes what he sees; McCoy has his usual issues, plus some extra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tallulah Falls

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the queen of AUs, jlh, for beta reading

There’s exactly one good thing about having worked in the E.R. at Black Rock Medical Center for six straight years without a vacation: you can choose your own shifts.

Leonard has it down to a science. Mondays mornings are nothing but heart attacks, Saturday nights are when lives change for the worse. Weekday afternoons and evenings are wholesome: small children and high school athletes, headaches and household injuries, and--just when Leonard is getting bored--a spectacular accident involving farm equipment.

That’s why when Christine Chapel, the hospital administrator, calls him aside and says, “We have a situation,” it’s a sign that something in Leonard’s dull but well-ordered life is about to go terribly wrong.

Leonard and Chris get along well; she lets him do his job and she’s not drama-prone, which is why the hand on the shoulder and the  _sotto voce_  routine are a surprise.

“You know that movie they’re filming? Up on Oakey Mountain?”

“No.”

“The one that had Highway 118 shut down the other day? Come on, it’s been on the news every night.”

“I don’t own a TV.” Leonard tries not to sound smug.

“Right, I forgot.” She does him the courtesy of omitting the eye roll. “Well, they’re filming a movie, and the star got hurt. Head injury. They’re bringing him in, but it’ll be 20 minutes at least. Ambulance is going to have to meet them at the foot of the service road.” She absently touches her hair. “Leonard, it’s Jim Kirk.”

“Who?”

“You’re unreal, you know that?” Now he gets the eye roll. “He’s incredibly famous.  _Love Three Ways_?  _The Enigma Redundancy_ ? God, what do you do in your free time?”

“I don’t have any, and I read books.”

“Okay, well.” She clutches her laptop to her chest. “There’ll probably be press. It’s a good chance to test out our crisis management plan. Wait in the staff room; I’ll have you paged as soon as he arrives.”

“Right. You bet. I’ll do that,” Leonard says, and goes back to seeing patients, starting with a little girl who broke her arm playing soccer. He’s just sent her off for an X-ray with a promise to sign her cast when Chris grabs him, gives him a dirty look and the injunction to “Be nice,” and shoves him into Exam Room C.

Leonard wishes in retrospect that he’d sat in the staff room and stewed, because as it is, he hasn’t had enough time to build up resentment for the guy. Kirk is perched on the exam table, back hunched and head down in the classic  _I feel nauseous and my head hurts_  posture. He's wearing disarmingly ridiculous seersucker pants and saddle shoes instead of something more hate-worthy like a seal fur jacket.

“Hi. I’m Dr. McCoy.” Leonard sticks his hand out and gets a wet-noodle handshake along with a jolt of blue eyes. Kirk's face is vaguely familiar--Leonard associates it with the sides of bus shelters--but it’s blanched, at least around the eyes, where it’s not covered with bronze-tinted makeup. Still, Leonard can see how it all makes sense: the regular features, the dark lashes, the long, slim body that would probably look perfect with the canonical 10 pounds added by the camera.

“Hi,” Kirk rasps, letting his head drop again.

“All right, let’s take a look at that head.” Kirk points to a place a few inches behind his hairline and Leonard begins probing with his fingers. Kirk's dark blond hair is stiff and sticky with some kind of styling goo, but Leonard finds the lump easily enough.

“Is it right there?” He presses gently.

“Ow!”

“Apart from the headache and the nausea, how do you feel? Dizziness, fatigue, vomiting?”

“I feel kinda shaky, and I have the urge to kill my director.” Kirk stretches his jaw until it pops, and Leonard begins mandibular palpitation.

“What did he do, make you stop a runaway train with your teeth?”

“He let a big pile of crates fall on me, for comic effect. He thought the shot would look better with real crates.” Kirk probes at the tender spot like it’s bringing the memory back. “He nearly shit himself when that one hit my head.”

“But you weren’t unconscious? No? Okay, I’m going to examine the rest of your face and neck, so hold tight.” Leonard palpates his facial, jaw and neck bones, noting nothing clinically significant, just perfect bone structure.

The pen light gives him a good look at the probably very bankable blue eyes, which respond just fine and don’t look overly dilated. He pulls out the opthalmoscope.

“Are you wearing  _eyeliner_?” Leonard also notices dark circles under his eyes.

“It helps with the--show up on camera-- _shit_ , that’s bright. Besides, I can totally see your nose hairs right now.”

Leonard helps him to his feet for the Romberg test; he sways a little but Leonard chalks that up to the fact that he seems tired as hell.

“Well,” Leonard says, steadying Kirk so he can sit back down, “you’ve got a simple concussion, but I’m going to order a CT scan because it will make my boss happy, and probably also that little guy in the baseball cap who’s making a fuss in the waiting room.” Leonard glances through the little window in the door at the commotion in the hallway and wonders how long he can draw out the exam.

“Is that Tony?” Kirk ducks his head to peer out the window. “Oh, shit. He's probably being an ass.”

“Then I won’t feel bad about the size of our bill.” Kirk smiles through a wince and lets Leonard help him with his jacket, which is an old-fashioned baseball-type number. “What’s this movie about, anyway?”

Kirk gives him a look like he just said something witty. “It’s a romantic comedy-heist movie set in a minor league baseball town in the 1920s. Tony calls it ‘ _O Brother Where Art Thou_  meets  _Ocean’s Eleven_  with a  _Bull Durham_  chaser.’”

“Sound awful,” Leonard says. “I’ll have them print out your discharge instructions, but basically, I want you to take it easy for at least the next 24 hours, take Tylenol for the pain, and come back if your symptoms don’t get better or you get any new ones. Oh, and someone should keep you under observation. I assume one of that entourage out there can handle it?”

Kirk doesn’t look pleased at the prospect. “I don’t suppose I could come home with you instead?” He raises his eyebrows and gives a little smirk, and Leonard gets a hint of what he’s probably like when he doesn’t feel like vomiting.

“Clarkesville may be the back of beyond, but we do have hotels, you know.” He asks Poole, who he knows has a teenage daughter, to take Kirk to Radiology and goes to talk to the short guy with the baseball cap. He listens anxiously to Leonard’s report with what could either be genuine concern or apprehension about a lawsuit.

“Oh. Oh, that’s good.” He takes off the baseball cap and runs a hand through his hair. “Shit. We’re behind schedule as it is. When will he be able to work again?”

“Another 24 hours.” Leonard thinks of the circles under Kirk's eyes. “Forty-eight to be on the safe side. You can bring him back here tomorrow afternoon, if you want; I’ll be on duty. And someone should stay with him tonight to keep an eye on him.”

“Yeah. Hey.” The director cups a hand around Leonard’s elbow, draws him close and lowers his voice. “Is there any way we might be able to engage your, uh, services for the next day or two? There’s already been one fuck-up today and I don’t want another. Just to keep an eye on him?”

Leonard snorts. “You don’t need a doctor, you need a babysitter. Watch him for neurological symptoms, that’s all.”

“Uh huh.” The director looks doubtful. “You know, sometimes we hire set doctors on dangerous shoots. We pay $1500 a day, plus expenses. For such short notice, I’d be happy to double it.”

Leonard blinks at the director; this does, of course, change matters. “I’ll have to clear it with my supervisor.”

“She’s fine with it. Ecstatic, even.” The director flashes him a quick, mirthless smile. “My assistant will bring you some paperwork. I’ll expect a report in the morning.”

Fifteen minutes later, a smiling Poole appears with Kirk, his CT scans in one hand, a pile of what look like autographs in the other.

“Change of plans,” Leonard says to Kirk, dangling his car keys. “Looks like I’m taking you home.”

The smile that sentence earns Leonard is enough to melt glass, and seems to make Poole weak at the knees. Leonard’s knees aren’t feeling too stable, either.

+++++

Kirk is very persuasive--or, more precisely, very good at whining until he gets what he wants. That’s how he gets Leonard to agree to take him to his own home instead of Kirk's hotel, which, according to Kirk, is poorly soundproofed, overrun with tourists, and impossible to secure from paparazzi.

Paparazzi are a fixation of Kirk's, in spite of the fact that Leonard has yet to see one. Chris got her moment in the sun giving a press conference for a half-dozen reporters, even getting to cloak-and-dagger a little with the lie that the hospital was going to keep Kirk overnight for observation. An assistant had appeared with an overnight bag, and Kirk had emerged from Exam Room C wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, a ball cap and sunglasses, looking less like a time traveler and more like a guy trying too hard not to be noticed.

“It’s the Lakers cap,” Leonard had said, though in truth it’s the jeans, which aren’t egregious, but a little too tight and too expensive-looking for local trade.

Now Kirk is leaning back in the passenger’s seat of Leonard’s eight-year-old Accord, eyes closed, giving Leonard ample time to fret about whether Kirk's going to sleep in Jo’s room or on the couch, how he can keep the guy entertained without a TV or even a pack of cards, and how much he’d rather be headed home alone after his shift, like every other Wednesday night.

He’s brooding so hard about those things that he completely forgets to worry about how his house will look to Kirk until they’re winding up the long, private road. Like a shack, probably, and Leonard like some kind of hillbilly, even though he graduated with honors from the Tulane School of Medicine, as he plans on telling Kirk if the subject comes up.

The terminal crunch of gravel wakes Kirk. “We’re here."

“What? Oh.” Kirk swabs a hand across his face.

“I’ll get your bag,” Leonard says, to let Kirk know he’s not the bag-carrying type, except that he’s supposed to be minding Kirk’s health.

“This is nice,” Kirk says, climbing the 30 stairs up the slope to where Leonard’s house perches like an owl above Whistler Creek. “ _Really_  nice. My house is on a hill, too.”

“As in, Hollywood Hills?”

Kirk turns to give him a nose-wrinkle of disgust. “Ew, no. Topanga Canyon." Leonard nods vaguely, having exhausted his knowledge of L.A. geography.

Once they’re inside the house, Kirk gives a cursory look around and makes straight for the framed photos on the mantelpiece.

“You’re  _married_ ? With a  _kid_?” He looks around in disbelief, as if daring either one to appear.

“Divorced.” The word usually has a lump-of-coal effect, but Kirk actually smiles.

“Oh. Well, your daughter’s super cute. Takes after her dad, although her mom is pretty hot, too. Shit, Southern women.” Kirk sighs.

“Yup. Known for their manners, too.”

Kirk takes the hint and pretends to look abashed. “Sorry. I think I have that disinhibition thing you mentioned before.” He points to his dented cranium.

“Right. Anyhow, you should take a nap. I’ll show you the bedroom.”

Leonard has to pick the best of limited options. There are two spare bedrooms: one he uses as a home office and the other is for Jo when she visits. It’s got a canopy and butterflies the two of them painted one sunny summer afternoon and a bed big enough for about half of Kirk's limbs. That just leaves the master bedroom, and Leonard doesn’t even have time to change the sheets.

“Uh...” Leonard picks up the shirt he changed his mind about this morning and throws it into the hamper. “If you’d rather--”

“This is perfect.” Kirk is standing a little too close, and giving him a more intimate version of the mind-wiping smile. Or maybe it only seems more intimate because he’s standing between Leonard and Leonard’s bed. “I’m sure I’ll have sweet dreams.”

 _Concussion_ , Leonard reminds himself, nodding stupidly, and closes the door and gets his ass downstairs as fast as he can without running.

+++++

It takes Leonard 15 minutes to tidy up the mid-week mess and put some chicken in the oven, and he manages to resist his cell phone for 15 more before caving.  _Are you sure you want to connect to the Internet_ ? it asks, and Leonard mentally answers  _No_  before typing  _Yes_. He doesn’t use it often and isn’t sure where to look, but Jim Kirk is extremely easy to find.

_Kirk irks Falls co-stars with on-set “diva” antics_   
_You can stay at Jim Kirk's favorite Bali getaway...for just $5,000 a night!_   
_Jen’s Tears as Jim Dumps Her...on Valentine’s Eve!!_

Kirk's on the red carpet in some of the photos, wearing a tux that fits like a glove and with his arm around the waist of a beautiful, expensively thin woman. In others, he’s in jeans and a T-shirt--the same T-shirt he’s asleep in upstairs, maybe even the same jeans--crossing streets or eating on the patio at posh restaurants. He looks consistently and blazingly happy in all of them, except for the occasional one where he shows his middle finger to the photographer.

Leonard switches the phone off and stands at the foot of the stairwell long enough to hear Kirk’s even, slightly congested near-snoring, then wanders outside. The double front porch was one of the features that sold Leonard on the house, though it had taken Leonard months more to get over his terror that Jo would somehow squeeze through the slats and fling herself off into the creek below. In fine weather, he spends his evenings out here, surrounded with citronella candles like a virgin with garlic in a vampire movie. Now, in early spring, it’s too chilly for his Georgia blood, but he enjoys the damp, loamy smell, the rot of last year’s leaves and fresh, tender things stirring beneath them.

Leonard loves nature, but it tends to be too full of metaphors for the overthoughtful mind. His own spring is past, and he’ll spend his summer seeing Jo into adulthood. He can’t regret anything, because that would mean regretting Jo, but there are times when it doesn’t feel wholly like a choice.

Guiltily, he switches the phone on again.

_Enigma Star Buys $6 Million Dream Villa in Topanga_

Leonard has been to California once, to visit his ex-roommate in San Francisco. He supposes it was beautiful, but mostly remembers homeless teenagers and seedy bars and his buddy going all out to get them into some dance party in a warehouse where Leonard drank something blue and ended up in the emergency room. He’s never been to L.A., and it doesn't seem to have any connection to his life, any more than the starlet-chasing bad boy of the celeb sites has anything to do with the affable, exhausted man asleep in Leonard's bed.

He switches the phone off, goes inside, and slips into the inside pocket of his jacket, buttoning it in so he won’t be tempted again.

+++++

Leonard hears the shower come on while he’s basting the chicken, and it stays on for a good, long while. As he puts the broccoli in the steamer, footsteps come pounding down the staircase.

“Holy  _fuck_ , that smells good!” Kirk appears in the door in a flannel shirt and seems about twice as big and twice as loud as before. This is, apparently, the high-definition Jim Kirk: cheeks pink, hair spiky and damp, eyes blazing like expensive Christmas ornaments. Leonard figures the next neurological exam can wait.

“Feeling better?”

“Fuck, yeah. I slept like a fucking log. What kind of mattress is that? I might have to get one.” Leonard shrugs, not really wanting to say  _The one that got me through five years of marriage and that my ex threatened to burn._

“So you cook, too? Damn. What are you making?” He’s in Leonard’s personal space again, cracking open the stove and peeking into the pots. “ _Awesome_ . Hey, the fireplace--can we build a fire? I mean, if it’s not too California of me to want one. I thought it would be  _warm_  in Georgia, you know? I’ve been freezing my ass off the last week. In the movie, it’s supposed to be summer.”

“Sure, if you want. See, the thing is, elevation--” But Kirk's already in the living room, throwing logs around and getting sawdust all over Leonard’s carpet. Leonard has his remaining brain cells occupied with not overcooking the broccoli.

If Leonard was expecting Hollywood  _hauteur_ , he gets quite the opposite. Kirk is noisily appreciative of everything, praising his chicken, finishing his vegetables, and practically setting fire to his chimney.

While they’re eating, and occasionally with his mouth open, Kirk details his problems with Tony, the director. The script is good, the cast is good, but Kirk is being driven crazy by a supporting actor, a college-circuit comedian Leonard has never heard of.

“It could be like one of those ‘70s period comedies with Robert Redford, you know? Popular, but smart. Instead, the studio’s been leaning on Tony to dumb it down. I’m dreading the promos: it’s going to be Dave getting a baseball in the nuts, then me putting my hand down Lara’s dress, and then probably that crate falling on me, because you know the son-of-a-bitch printed that shit. And teenagers will come the first weekend and be bored, and there’ll be a big drop in the second-weekend box office, and then a bunch of stories about how I’m overpaid.” Kirk stops shoving chicken into his mouth for a minute. “Sorry. I’m bitching to a guy who’s doing life-and-death stuff every day, and probably being paid jack shit for it. It’s not the money, seriously. God, I must sound like an asshole.”

“No, it’s interesting. I never think about the movie business being like any other job. And the scrutiny--” To a privacy-loving man like Leonard, it seems intolerable.

“Yeah.” Kirk's mouth twists into a wry smile. “Oh woe is me, listen to me bitch about how I hate the attention I practically drowned kittens for.”

"So if it isn't the money--why do you do it?"

Kirk puts down his fork. "Because performing--when it works, it's like flying. You can't do anything wrong. And once you have 100 people watching you in silence with their mouths hanging open, then you want 500 people, and then 5,000. I wish I could tell you I'd love it just as much if I were doing dinner theater productions of  _The Fantasticks_ , but it'd be a lie. I like knowing that the whole crazy machine, millions and millions of dollars, is riding on me. The risk makes it better."

Leonard looks at the fanatical gleam in his eyes, and tries to remember a time when he felt that passionate about anything.

"Have you seen any of my movies?" Kirk scrapes up the last of the mashed potatoes with his knife and licks it, and Leonard has to smile.

"I don't get out to the movies much." It's nicer than saying that 90 percent of what's on offer is irredeemable crap.

"Too bad. I'd like to know what you think." He gives Leonard a tilt of the eyebrow, as if he can already guess. "I'll send you some vouchers for  _Tallulah Falls_. You can take your daughter, if Dave doesn't figure out some way to have me go full frontal before this thing is over."

When Leonard rises to clear the plates, Kirk stops him and shoos him toward the sofa, where he stares into the fire and listens to the guy who’s making $5 million for his latest picture wash his dishes, and what really touches him is how  _domestic_  it sounds.  _Pathetic_ , Leonard thinks.  _If he scrubbed your toilet you’d probably offer to--_

He stops that thought in its tracks. If there’s one thing he’s resolved not to do, it’s let on that he finds Kirk shatteringly attractive, as much for his energy and enthusiasm as the way his slim hips and long legs look in the too-skinny jeans. Luckily, Leonard has plenty of experience keeping those particularly feelings locked up tight.

Kirk exits the kitchen and flips off the switch without looking, like he’s done it a hundred times.

“Lakers game is on.”

“I don’t own a TV.” For once, Leonard regrets it.

“I know. It was just an observation.”

It’s the last bit of dusk, the time when you can still make out the outlines of trees but not much else. Kirk goes around the first-floor windows and closes the curtains, like a CIA agent or somebody who’s been in a movie about one.

“In the unlikely event a photographer decides to drive up here,” Leonard says, “we’ll hear him on the gravel.”

“They could come through the woods,” Kirk says in a stagy whisper.

“Good luck to them, then. It’s spring turkey season.”

The fire is mature enough to be throwing off loads of infrared heat, but Kirk sits down not on the sofa but on the floor, back parallel to Leonard’s legs, and pats the rug next to him. Puzzled, Leonard slides off the couch and sits down.

“Where’d you go to med school?” Kirk asks.

“Tulane.” Leonard has no idea where this is going.

“Top of your class?”

“More or less.” Third in his graduating class, actually. He almost says so. But in the still, empty moments, Kirk staring at the fire and not him, Leonard sees what Kirk sees: the man, the child, the solitary house, the lack of windows to the outside world. A life that’s more isolated than it needs to be, in a way that started as self pity but is now something else.

They sit in silence, shoulder to shoulder, staring into the fire, which Leonard finds more primally compelling than any television. He's increasingly aware of Kirk's physical proximity, something that in Leonard's limited experience often means mutual attraction, but he tries to filter it out as so much noise generated by Kirk's charisma.

He's so successful that when, after a few minutes, Kirk wraps his fingers around Leonard’s own, he accepts it as simple companionship, doesn’t even think of how many ways it’s inappropriate. But when Kirk puts a hand on the back of Leonard’s head to turn it and then leans in to kiss him, Leonard’s heat-and-food-tranquilized brain goes into a full, nerve-jangling, five-alarm state of panic.

Kirk's lips are warm and full and he smells like wood smoke and expensive cologne. His shoulders, when Leonard shoves them away, are all lean muscle under the soft fabric of his shirt. Everything about him is temptation, including the baffled look he gives Leonard as Leonard scrambles to his feet as if the Devil himself had sent Jim Kirk, the same Devil that Leonard doesn’t believe in.

“Jesus!” Leonard half-shouts, terror passing reasonably well for indignation. “What the hell are you doing? Tell your director he didn’t pay for  _that_.”

“ _Pay_ ?” Kirk's still looking up at Leonard like Leonard’s the one who’s behaving irrationally. The fire alarm keeps going on and on in Leonard’s head:  _He could tell, could tell right away. Everyone can tell_.

“Yeah,” Leonard wheezes, “that little pipsqueak  _paid_  me to take you off his hands for the evening. But Jesus, it was just to keep an eye on you. I fed you, I let you sleep in my bed, and now you--” He can’t finish the sentence.

“How much?” Kirk asks with interest.

“Three thousand,” Leonard says, feeling every inch the gigolo he’s swearing that he isn’t.

“Not bad.” Kirk seems mildly impressed. “I’m glad you’re getting something out of this.” A faint afterimage of the Kirk smile is back, and it’s enough to make Leonard genuinely pissed off.

“Apart from the cheap moves, you mean.”

“Len,” Kirk says, using his name for the first time. “You’re the loneliest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

“And so, what--you’re going to give me a pity fuck? Is there some Hollywood charity for that?”

“No, but maybe I’ll put out a press release. I could use some good PR.” When Leonard doesn’t smile, Kirk huffs out a sigh. “For fuck’s sake, at least sit down. It’s making my neck hurt, looking up at you.”

Leonard does, not knowing what else to do, and a second later the hand is back, clasping his own tighter than before. For some reason he doesn’t question the logic of accepting consolation from the guy who made the incredibly rude, wrong-headed pass, in his own home no less.

He thinks of a dozen things to say, but there’s really nothing to lose, so he says the thing that’s foremost in his mind.

“Is it that obvious?”

“What?” Kirk says. “That you’re lonely and hard up? Totally. That you’re into dudes? I deal professionally in body language, so I’m probably not the best person to ask. Do you really care?”

“For God’s sake, of course I do.” Kirk isn’t wrong about the monastic existence. Georgia is a no-fault divorce state, and Jocelyn’s been incredibly generous, letting him see Jo every weekend and many times in between. But her parents hate Leonard down to the soles of his shoes, and the courts are conservative. Any hint that Leonard might be gay could transform him, through that inimitable Evangelical logic, into a Satanic pervert who invites goats and choir boys out to his lair deep in the woods and does horrible things to them.

“Is that what broke up your marriage?” 

 _Jesus, kid_ , Leonard thinks. But it’s undeniably liberating to be able to talk about it with an interested, non-judgmental stranger.

“Basically, yes. I knew, but I guess it wasn’t obvious, at least to my wife. I wanted things--those things--” he points at the photos on the mantel. “I thought I could control it. It was totally my fault. Only one good thing came out of it.”

“That sucks,” Kirk says, tightening his hand on Leonard’s for a second before releasing it. “But it’s the past. You don’t have to play pillar of society for me.” He gives Leonard a lopsided grin. “I have one of those travel chess sets in my bag, if you’d rather.”

The offer melts away Leonard’s defenses as easily as if it were the blast-furnace heat of the fire. Kirk’s a nice enough guy who just happens to have obscene good looks and an outlandish occupation, and he’s sitting in Leonard’s living room offering to have sex with him and then vanish the next day.

“Do you think about  _everything_  before you say it?” Kirk peers into his eyes like he’s trying to see behind them. “I’m not wrong about the hard-up part, am I? I’ve looked at your bookcase. Strindberg?  _Márquez?_  The Strindberg means you need to get laid, but the Márquez means you’ve given up hope.”

Leonard has to laugh at that. "College boy, huh?"

"Dropout, actually. Maybe that's why I go for the moody, intellectual types." He smirks at Leonard, who doesn't rise to the bait. "I played the valet in  _Miss Julie_  a while back, though, in New York. Do you at least approve of the  _legitimate theater_?" he asks, the last part in a passable English accent.

"Sure, love it. Atlanta's got pretty good theater, you know. I always mean to go--"

"But let me guess," Kirk finishes. "You never do. You're an interesting puzzle, Len: this hot, smart guy who lives in the woods like a Russian hermit." He runs an experimental finger along the line of Leonard's jaw. "How far do you take the monk thing, anyway?"

“I’m not celibate, if that’s what you mean.” Once or twice a month, Leonard drives to Atlanta on a Friday night and stays with his high school friend Tomas. Tomas has a free-flowing circle of mostly younger acquaintances, and they go out to dinner, or to a club, or watch movies at his apartment. There’s nearly always someone who likes Leonard’s looks and the fact that he tops. Leonard always comes back afterward and crashes on Tomas’s sofa and leaves early in the morning, so he can shower and wash the smoke out of his clothes and otherwise purge himself of the experience before he picks up Jo in the afternoon. He never gives any of them his number, and he rarely hooks up with any of them twice.

"Good." Kirk leans in to kiss Leonard again and it's like a challenge, as if, in this short time, he's made a complete catalog of all Leonard's forms of cowardice and is daring him to do this one small thing. Leonard listens for the chorus of objections from inside his own head and, for once, hears nothing. Kirk is unencumbered, practically non-existent, or at least not a part of his reality.

And so, Leonard does it. He’s never kissed anyone in this house, and it’s like a magic spell breaking. His hands reach for Kirk's lean body, the thought  _it’s okay to touch_  making him feel light as a feather. Leonard’s caged, abused libido is a fearsome thing when released.

"Tell me," Kirk says into his ear. "What is it?"

“I want to go down on you,” he rasps.

Kirk's hands tighten on his biceps. "Good idea."

“I’m going to use a condom.” He makes it declarative, but still expects bitching.

“Sure. Fine.” Kirk makes a shooing motion with hands. “So, get one! Go! Run!”

Leonard takes the stairs two at a time and in a couple of seconds is rifling around in his travel bag. He makes his way back downstairs with a little more dignity than he went up and pauses at the bottom to look at Kirk, sitting with one leg cocked, his shirt half-open and his fly fully unzipped. Leonard frames the shot in his head like a director, because it’s perfect: the planes and angles of Kirk's face golden and shaded in the firelight, his body quiescent, a picture of relaxation, except for his eyes. They turn on Leonard with feral brightness as Leonard walks back into the room.

“Lie down,” Leonard orders, before he loses his nerve.

Kirk's like a buffet, like a table of gifts. Since Leonard has no real idea who he is, there’s no mental soundtrack of  _holy hell I’m about to go down on Jim Kirk_ , just the pleasure of a beautiful body ripe with possibilities.

Leonard pushes Kirk’s knees apart and kneels between them. Kirk leans back on his elbows and watches with bright interest as Leonard yanks his jeans down with care--extra care, since there’s a zipper involved.

The cock that now enters the picture causes Leonard’s eyebrows to go up to his hairline. It’s long and pale and perfect, with the humanizing detail that it curves slightly to the right. Leonard gives a little grunt of anticipation that makes Kirk chuckle. Leonard now wishes, hypocritically, that he could toss the condom into the fire and taste Kirk, feel the texture of skin against his lips.

Touching won’t hurt, though. Touching is fine. He wraps an assessing hand around the base and squeezes, feels the answering tremor. The skin is velvety and taut, his balls ample and heavy, and Leonard mentally maps an epic hand job that may or may never happen at another time. As he strokes, Kirk leans back with a sigh, folding the pillow so he can still watch but going supine as nature’s narcotics go to work on his brain.

He sets an almost-rhythm; he’s far from wanting to move Kirk toward climax, but he doesn’t want to strip the paint off Kirk's nervous system, either. The house is silent except for the background noise of the spring peepers, those tiny, horny little frogs calling out for mates. Leonard has found his mate for the night, and he’s laid out in front of the fire, warm and relaxed, and Leonard wants to bring him off without having to put stitches in his head after all.

He kind of expected Kirk to be vocal--the guy rarely shuts up and has no filter--but there’s plenty of feedback, anyway, in the way his balls are drawing taut, and the way his back arches and his hips wiggle as Leonard works him, looking for what it’s going to take to get him to pop, pressure or suction or hitting a certain spot.

“Tongue,” Kirk breathes, reading his mind. “Right under the head.”

Leonard flicks his tongue across the frenulum, frustrated by the microns of latex separating him from the flesh he aches to taste, but the sensation is apparently transmitted, and Kirk's hand clutches his hair. Leonard keeps it up, working the tiny cluster of nerve endings that for now control Kirk's body and brain, and he begins to grip the shaft rhythmically, with intent.

If Kirk wasn’t vocal before, he is now. He moans and sighs  _Yeah, yeah_ , louder and louder, and Leonard likes his voice, likes the feel of his flesh, likes the smell of his own soap on Kirk's skin, loves that of all the places in the world this is happening right here in front of his own fireplace, and tries to forget for the moment the family photos staring down at him.  _This isn’t wrong_ , he says to himself, holding on to the thought like a promise.

Kirk comes with a shout, without warning. It echoes off the flagstones and through Leonard’s skull, and he feels Kirk arch, and buck, and lose his grip on Leonard’s hair. Leonard applies moderate suction, still pumping, trying to pull every last sensation out of him, but Kirk's grunts of pleasure turn into oversensitivity and he begs Leonard to  _Stopstopstop_ , and Leonard does, pulling his mouth away, freeing his hands and stroking down Kirk's lean thighs, still sheathed in denim.

“C’mere,” Kirk says, raspy and hoarse. Leonard extracts himself from between Kirk's legs and lies down next to him, propped on one arm, looking at Kirk's face.

“Do you need me to tell you that was amazing?” Kirk's voice is lower than you’d expect. “Yeah, you probably do. Fucking  _fantastic_ , that’s how that was. I think you’ve given me a doctor fetish, because your hands--oh my God, and your  _lips_ .” He cups a hand under Leonard’s chin and brushes his thumb across Leonard’s mouth. “Holy  _fuck_. They were the first thing I noticed when you walked into that exam room. Well, the second.”

Leonard waits for a punchline, but apparently there isn’t one, just Kirk tracing his facial features with a hint of professional interest but no detachment at all. It’s more intimate, somehow, than having Kirk's cock in his mouth and also worrisome, because it means when the coach turns back into a pumpkin there’s going to be a lot more to forget.

“Yeah, well,” Leonard says, to prevent Kirk from saying something more dire, “you’re not exactly hideous yourself.”

Kirk gives a chuckle that turns into a cough and pulls Leonard across him, a sprawl of body weight that must be half-crushing, but Kirk just tightens his arms across Leonard’s back. Leonard’s own erection, which has been causing him discomfort for the last 15 minutes, is wedged between them in an unhappy flux between too much friction and not enough pressure.

“I’m going to get rid of the condom and the clothes,” Kirk says, “and then I’d like you to fuck me."

Leonard's first thought, after the fizzing lightning strike of arousal that goes through him, is that Kirk is moving pretty damn fast, until he remembers that he's the guy who does nothing but fuck and leave.

"Is there a problem with that suggestion?"

"'Course not," Leonard says, working to sound composed. "Sounds like a damn good idea to me."

"Well, then." He disentangles himself and rolls to his feet, offering Leonard, whose knees are a little shaky, a welcome hand. "So, do you like to top or bottom?”

“Top.” Leonard hopes that it’s the right answer. It’s certainly been a popular one, in the past, though Leonard wishes it were something as simple as a preference and not his discomfort with his late-blooming sexual identity.

“I knew it.” Kirk squeezes him again, a weirdly boy-with-puppy gesture considering what he’s asking Leonard to do to him. “You’re  _perfect_. Let's go upstairs."

There’s not much to do except turn out the porch light. Ghosts of another life flit through Leonard’s mind; he's sitting with Jocelyn by a different fire until they're both heavy lidded, more in need of sleep than sex or conversation in those early days when Jo was a baby. There’s no reason to be quiet now, but Leonard still treads slowly out of respect for the memory.

When they’re through the door of his bedroom Kirk grabs him from behind, sticking his face in the curve between Leonard’s ear and shoulder and putting a hand halfway down Leonard’s sensible twill trousers.

“You know why I slept so well before? I jerked off in your bed.” Seeing Leonard’s grimace, he adds, “Don’t worry, I used tissues. But the sheets smelled like you, and I imagined you lying in that exact spot on a summer night, all naked and sweaty. You sleep naked, right?”

“Sure.” Actually, Leonard sleeps in ratty old pajamas or equally ratty boxers, depending on the season, but Kirk's fantasy is compelling.

“I’ll be right back,” Kirk says, releasing him with a pat to the ass. “Don’t get undressed yet, okay?” Leonard suddenly feels self-consciously clothed.

“Hey, do you want me to do any prep?” The question rings off the tiles of Leonard’s bathroom, making him cringe a little, though there’s no one around for miles.

“No, it’s fine. I’m a doctor; it doesn’t bother me.” It’s another of Leonard’s many selling points. In many respects he’s a Metro Weekly ad come to life, except for living in the boonies, having a kid, being vanilla, and not going out on weekends.

Kirk exits the bathroom shedding his shirt and throws himself onto Leonard’s bed with a wheeze of box springs, tucking a pillow and his hands behind his head and getting ready for a show.

“Okay, you can undress now.” When Leonard starts unbuttoning his shirt, Kirk says, “No no no. Slowly. Jesus, how can a guy who looks like you not be used to having people look at him?”

“Usually when people look at me, it’s because they’re waiting to hear what horrible condition they have.”

“I bet half of them are making up symptoms just to get into an exam room alone with you. Probably a lot of sprained asses and mysterious nipple ailments, am I right?”

Leonard snorts and kicks off his shoes. He has no idea how to turn this into a performance, so he resumes unbuttoning a bit more slowly, and with eye contact. It seems to work, as Kirk's eyes slide from his fingers to his face and back again, lips curving into a smile of such radiant sweetness in the service of mischief that Leonard thinks with pity of Kirk's mother.

He shrugs the shirt off and goes to hook it on the door of his closet, and when he turns back Kirk is sitting upright and his smile has turned to open-mouthed shock.

“Ho-lee-shit. How much do you work out?”

Leonard shrugs. “Enough to stay in shape, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.” Kirk's voice is hushed and reverent. “Now the pants.” He repositions himself so his head’s at the foot of the bed resting on his hands, face a foot or so from Leonard’s groin.

Leonard’s slower this time with good reason, because his erection has flagged with thought and scrutiny. Still, there’s no delaying the inevitable, as first the pants come off and then the boxers, and he’s standing there naked with nowhere to put his hands.

“Oh my God,” Kirk breathes. “Yes.  _Yes_.” He slaps a hand on the comforter and then bites his knuckle in the classic manner.

Leonard flushes. “You’re yanking my chain.”

Kirk's eyes flick briefly upward. “I am not. You don’t understand. This is like--you know those news stories where someone finds a rock in their yard and it turns out to be a gazillion-carat diamond? This is like that. I  _discovered_  you, this fucking unbelievable hotness, out here in the red, rocky soil of Bumfuck County.”

“It’s  _Habersham_ County. For God’s sake, we have a  _shopping mall_.”

“Good for y'all,” Kirk says, flipping over on his back. “Now bring that perfect dick over here so I can suck it.”

Leonard does, if only to shut him up. The angle is strange but Kirk mostly just teases the head, anyway, licking and nibbling with his lips, letting it bob in and out like an apple. The sight of it, Kirk's long body half-undressed on his bed, plus Kirk's hands reaching around to squeeze and stroke his ass, are melting his brain like candle wax, but his dick--the stubborn, willful thing remains at half mast. A minute or two is socially acceptable, but when Kirk flips over, repositions, and begins to suck in earnest, Leonard is tempted to jerk away, feeling embarrassed, inadequate and downright rude.

Kirk gives him another few minutes of the works--lips and tongue and hands stroking the underside of his ass, introducing themselves to his balls--before he rolls off and onto his stomach, looking at Leonard's eyes and not his recalcitrant cock.

"Am I way off base here?" he asks, patient as if he's taking direction. "Don't suffer in silence. If there's something you want, tell me."

Leonard could almost hate him for making it sound so simple, but he doesn't.

"I don't-- I'm not--" He stutters to a stop, before adding, "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it." Kirk reaches out a hand to Leonard and pulls him onto his own bed, so that Leonard lands with a thud on top of the sheets where they've both slept. "It's probably been a long time."

"No, it hasn't." They're face-to-face, lying on their sides, and if it's not the smoking-hot sex Leonard was expecting, it's something he may need just as much. "It's was just--different. With the others."

"Different how?" Kirk doesn't make a move to touch him, just listens. Leonard glances away, thinking of those easygoing young men with their encyclopedic knowledge of cocktails and their superficial conversation.

"They were strangers."

Kirk's face goes still for a minute, and there's sympathy in his eyes that Leonard neither wants nor deserves. Then the corners of his mouth tug up.

" _Really_. What are we talking here? Parking lot of the Dairy Queen? Men's room at the Smoky Mountain Scenic Overlook?"

"Oh, up yours," Leonard says with a roll of his eyes, and relaxes.

Kirk reaches out a hand to stroke down Leonard's side to his hip, and Leonard shivers. It isn't the touch as much as the mischievous look in Kirk's eyes, and suddenly his cock is rising like it's been summoned.

Kirk takes his time with Leonard's body, using his tongue on Leonard's nipples, licking and mouthing his skin with warm lips that go everywhere except where he's expecting them. Kirk doesn't seem to be running through a repertoire; instead, he pays attention to the specificities and idiosyncrasies of Leonard's body, and finally Leonard thaws, lets himself be greedy, guides Kirk's head and hands to where their attentions feel best.

When Kirk finally makes it down to Leonard's cock, he's as hard as he's ever been, and he almost doesn't care. Kirk wraps a hand around it like it's his own, which it almost is--his creation, anyway.

“You ready now? To fuck me?”

Leonard licks his dry lips and says, "Yes. How ready are you? Should I go slow?” He really, really doesn’t want to know Kirk's sexual history, but it’s necessary and prudent to ask.

“Go however you like.” He leans over to Leonard’s nightstand, opens the drawer, and pulls out the bottle of lube.

It’s a neat trick, since it makes Leonard wonder if he snooped before, maybe used some of Leonard’s personal stash to get himself off earlier (which Leonard only half believes) or if he just has personal experience of that many nightstands, adept as a burglar at finding what he wants and getting out fast.

He hands the bottle to Leonard and lies back, one knee cocked up. There’s a hint of challenge, as if he’s waiting to see what Leonard will do with a three-quarters-full bottle of Ultra Glide and an open invitation. Whatever else, he’d like to wipe the slight smirk off Kirk's face. He grips the little bottle in his fist and knocks a hand against Kirk's upright knee.

“Spread ‘em.”

Kirk does, opening his long legs wide and canting his hips up the slightest bit so Leonard can see a hint of the smooth, rounded flesh of his ass. His mind clouds for a minute with a tactile precognition of filling his hands with that soft flesh, feeling it against the sharp angles of his hipbones.

Leonard makes a show of pouring out a palmful of lube, letting it warm in his hand. They’ve got a light sheen of salty sweat, both of them, from their grappling in front of the fire. Now things are about to get liquid and sticky, which Leonard likes. His fear of touching men, loving men, never included disgust at their bodies or the act itself; he’s a doctor and a humanist in the deepest sense.

He drips some of the lube down Kirk’s balls, and Kirk jumps a little as his nerves spark at the contact. More goes onto Leonard’s cock, and Kirk takes a wide-eyed interest in how Leonard’s hand slides up his own shaft. It feels so good, but it will feel so much better sheathed in something tight and hot.

Leonard uses two fingers to work the lube in, explore, feel the tight space burning with the heat of internal body temperature. With his still-sticky hand he grips Kirk's cock as he slides a finger in, instant overstimulation to them both. Kirk's eyes close and he gasps, turning his head away.

“Watch me,” Leonard says, not really an order, just a desire that he speaks out loud. When Kirk looks back at him there’s something frank in his eyes that Leonard doesn’t quite understand, but Kirk bites his lip and the corners of his mouth turn up in satisfaction.

When Kirk's muscles clench around his finger, the sensation is transmitted directly to his cock along with desire so acute that he has to close his eyes, concentrate on not losing it before he’s even really started. He pulls his finger out carefully and glances at Kirk and the kid is grinning, most definitely fucking with him, goading him, to see what Leonard’s got.

Leonard has no idea how they do it in Hollywood, but he figures the basics of fucking are pretty much the same everywhere, and he’ll be damned if Kirk goes back to California with a hazy memory of disappointment at the hands of the hard-up doctor. He moves into position, relishing the hard physicality of it, arm and stomach muscles working as he bends over Kirk, only to be completely surprised again as Kirk twists out of his grip and onto his belly.

“Like this,” Kirk says, giving him a slow-burning sideways glance so that Leonard realizes that eye contact is most definitely not out of the question. “I like it like this.”

Kirk's lying on his stomach, face and arms pressed harder than they need to be in the tangled sheets. From this vantage Leonard sees an infinite expanse of lean, muscled back dusted with freckles; long, pale thighs; and the most perfect ass he’s ever seen since a  _kouros_  in the High Museum gave him an unwelcome boner at the age of 13. In his low-bandwidth state, Leonard is aware that Kirk is giving him information, in the way he holds his body tense, the way he draws his knees up, raising and exposing that glorious ass, but he has no idea how to interpret it. Maybe it’s surrender, maybe it’s trust, or maybe it’s just that Kirk likes to get his ass fucked, in which case Leonard has nothing to gain by not obliging him.

He runs a hand down Kirk's back and raises goosebumps. When Leonard’s alone in the house he keeps the heat turned down, and the spring night is chilly. He shifts forward, arms straddling Kirk, mostly for the body heat but it inevitably makes his hard, swinging cock brush against the soft skin of Kirk's inner thigh, and they both gasp.

“Do it,” Kirk hisses. “Do it, do it.”

There’s no doubt who’s giving the orders now. Leonard fumbles for the condom, rolling the slippery thing on with unsteady fingers, and then takes himself in hand, his own cock jumping and seizing at the pressure, and guides it in, rubbing in little circles because he’s testing and because it feels so damn good.

When he slides in, there’s a sudden pop, and then nothing but heat and pressure, nerve impulses racing to Leonard’s brain, pulling him down like a crumbling building.

Hand free, he settles himself back over Kirk, holding his hips rigidly in place but lowering his upper body so that he can mouth the sharp outline of Kirk's shoulder blade and down to the parallel lines of his ribs. A jolt of tenderness hits him in the sternum just like it has before with other partners, and he can’t help it; whether it’s socially conditioned or just how he is, this position always makes him go a little soft inside, even more than kissing.

“Jim,” Leonard breathes. Kirk gives him nothing, just sips in air and shuts his eyes tight. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he gasps. “Don’t stop.”

Fraction by fraction Leonard slides in, the smooth pull of internal muscles so tight Leonard’s ears ring and a haze clouds his vision. His talkative, interfering mind blanks to nothing except the sweetness of it, and he fights to listen, to see, because it has to hurt, there’s no way that it doesn’t.

He’s aware of sweat breaking out on both their bodies, Kirk making little  _Nngh_  sounds, but he’s actually pushing back, driving Leonard in faster, until he feels his hip bones dock over the cool swell of Kirk's buttocks.

Kirk gives a gasp of unmistakable pleasure.

“Fuck,” he says tightly. “Fuck that’s good.”

Hanging on for dear life, Leonard tries a little shift, not even consciously moving as much as not trying to stay still. It must work because it forces a raspy moan out of Kirk. Leonard’s mouth ranges across his shoulders, looking for distraction, because he doesn’t want to lose it, not yet, and there’s plenty of distraction to be found: the nape of Kirk's neck and the slightly curling blond hairs just above it, the warm pulse-point behind his ear. Everything’s connected, by blood and nerves and muscles in ways that Leonard knows well, but right now all that matters is that they’re connected by the completely physical magic of his cock.

He wants to stay like this, but there’s a chorus of things urging him on: the muscles clenched tight in his arms and belly, Kirk's sharp gasps and wriggling backward thrusts. He gives a an experimental, minute thrust and Kirk ignites, arching his back, clutching at the sheets, and letting out a strangled cry. Leonard rides the wave for a moment or two with giddy hubris only to lose it himself in a hot, hard surge of pleasure and the unmatchable victory of ejaculation.

He collapses on Kirk's back because he already knows that Kirk likes the feeling of weight, and because he can’t do anything else. Kirk's skin is slick with sweat and his breathing is harsh.

“You still okay?” he asks, tasting the salt on his skin.

“Sure, sure. Jesus  _fuck_.” Kirk turns his head to meet Leonard’s eyes. “That’s not all you’ve got, is it? Because I want to do this again later.”

“That wasn’t enough for you?” It comes out a little whiny, partly because Leonard barely has a voice.

The giddy, boyish smile is back. “Nothing’s ever enough. But it was pretty fucking great.” Leonard accepts a kiss with relief. “Now kindly get the fuck out of me so I can go do what I gotta do.”

Leonard obliges, careful as he can be with limited motor control, holding onto the condom with one hand and trying to be both careful and efficient. This part is less pleasant, and when Kirk rolls off the bed and heads for the bathroom, Leonard gets rid of the condom and strips off the sheet and prepares for the post-coital awkwardness. Normally, this is where he’d be pulling on his pants and prepping his see-you-around speech, but he’s in his own bedroom with a house guest who’s too large to sleep anywhere else.

The water runs for a good, long while, and when Kirk comes out he’s rubbing his arms, which are all goose flesh and golden hairs.

“Fuck, I’m cold. Any chance that fire is still going?”

“Sure, probably.” He watches as Kirk pulls the quilt off the bed and gets the idea to grab a blanket out of the closet, in case he won’t be invited to share.

They pad downstairs wrapped in blankets like a couple of kids at a sleepover, reversing the natural order of Leonard's nightly ritual. It’s not  _wrong wrong wrong_  but  _different_ : having a guy over, spending the night, meals and fires and things that ordinary people--normal people--take for granted. It’s what got Leonard in trouble in the first place, his love of the ordinary and the charm of sharing it with someone who appreciated it, too. Joss was smart and driven, but when he saw her sitting across his mother's table from him eating her oyster casserole and smiling--then, everything had seemed possible.

Kirk tosses the last two logs haphazardly on the fire and parks himself on the sofa, still somehow hot and not ridiculous even though he’s basically wearing Leonard’s bedspread. The awkward where-to-sit question is resolved when Kirk extends an arm and grabs for Leonard’s blanket, wrapping it around his legs.

The fire blazes back to life, and Kirk wraps his arm around Leonard’s waist. It’s fortunate that Kirk isn’t much more than a CGI effect that will vanish in the morning, because Leonard’s lust for the ordinary--as well as his lust in general--has been stoked, reviving from the embers of the last five years.

“What's your story?” Leonard asks, into the stillness. “Is it a problem for your career? Being, uh, gay, I mean.”

“I’m bi. No, seriously,” he says, as if Leonard’s objecting. “I love women. I love having sex with women. And guys, obviously. I don’t hide it but I’m not on the cover of  _People_  giving heartfelt interviews about it, either. I’m saving that for my later, more desperate phase.”

“But in L.A.--does anyone care?” Leonard’s surprised at how invested he is in the idea of the liberal coasts.

"It depends what you mean by 'care'." Are they personally judgmental about it? No. But career-wise? It's amazing how conservative people suddenly get when there's money involved. I have a friend who was this total hippie flower child. Then she moved to Malibu Colony and now all she can talk about is how her neighbor's concrete driveway violates the Association rules. It's all about property values, man."

"And you're the property."

Kirk gives a grunt--of protest or agreement, Leonard isn't sure--and shifts to the end of the sofa so Leonard can stretch out, head in a tangle of blankets in Kirk's lap, feet propped up on the sofa’s arm. Kirk strokes his hair back from his forehead and begins to rub his scalp, and the pleasure of it flows through Leonard’s body like warm water. It’s a moment of grace, unexpected as it is undeserved: darkness and quiet and companionship and honesty, the smell of sex and wood smoke and old blankets.

“And what about you? Why don’t you live in Atlanta?” Kirk asks, tugging on a strand of Leonard’s hair. “It’s what, an hour away?”

“Hour and a half, without traffic, which is never. When Jo--when my daughter--was younger, I helped out a lot more with the child care, because of my ex-wife’s schedule.”

“And now she’s in school, right? She’ll be a teenager soon. I’m not trying to pry--okay, I am. You should stop doing penance. Get a hot little condo and a job at a better hospital and carpet-bomb the eager young bottoms of Buckhead. Jesus, a _doctor_. You could be one-half of a gorgeous power couple, with your painstakingly restored Tara on the cover of the real estate porn mag. Society ladies eat that shit up; you’ll be sponsoring charity balls inside of a year, I guarantee it.”

Leonard says nothing because he realizes that Kirk designs fantasy lives for a living.

“Like I said, I’m an asshole.” Kirk ruffles his hair in apology. “I don’t know shit about your life. Have I torpedoed my chances of getting a Round Two?”

“You should get some rest. _I_  should get some rest.” He’s already into the post-coital regret phase, the ebbing endorphins making him feel like he shouldn’t have been fucking Kirk on somebody else’s dime, probably not at all.

“Okay.” For the first time that night, Kirk sounds tentative. “But you are coming to bed, right? You’re not going to sleep on the couch?”

“No, I’ll come to bed.” He stirs with deep reluctance, climbing the stairs heavy-boned and sinking gratefully into bed with Kirk beside him, too many long limbs for total comfort, but with the welcome heat and weight of another body, which Leonard and his bed haven’t known for a long time.

Kirk doesn’t cuddle, and he doesn’t make himself at home with glasses of water or an unpacked bag. Instead, he drops heavily and enviably into sleep, easy as turning out a light, breath even and clear and soothing to a doctor’s soul.

Leonard lies awake for a long time thinking about the strange, random intersections of lives.

Some time in the gray pre-dawn, Kirk gets up to take a piss, and Leonard engages him in enough grunted conversation to make sure he’s not suffering from fresh neurological symptoms. When Kirk falls back into bed he throws an arm around Leonard, who spends more time than he should imprinting Kirk's early-morning scent of stale cologne and sweat before falling into a confused dream about a giant house on the edge of a cliff.

The landline phone wakes Leonard a little after 7:30, sending a jangling message of  _late for work_  down his spine. Kirk grabs his arm, muttering “Stay,” but Leonard shakes it off, even as he remembers that he’s not working today.

“Hello?”

“How is he?” Leonard lets a few seconds pass in puzzled silence before he recognizes the voice of Tony, the director.

“Oh. Hi. He’s just fine. He’s still asleep, actually. Best thing for him.” That sounds insufficiently medical for $3,000, so Leonard adds, “I’m going to administer a final neurological test around 10 AM.” Leonard hopes to God that the phone isn’t picking up the sounds of Kirk yawning mere feet away, let alone his “Tell the fucker I’m dying.”

“Can he go back to work today?” The director’s voice is tightly coiled with expectation.

It would be so easy to say no. A little medical bullshit and he could have Kirk for another night. Kirk's imagination must be infectious because the day furls out before him: a lazy breakfast, a hike, lunch on Lake Burton, maybe fishing if Kirk doesn’t turn out to be some some kind of bleeding heart. Kirk can help him get the grill out and it won’t be against doctor’s orders tonight to have some beers, and then the long, spectacular fucking that Leonard now feels ready to give.

“Sure,” he hears himself saying. “If there are no new symptoms after 24 hours, he’s should be in the clear.”

“Thank fuck for that,” the director sighs. “Can you have him here by 2 o’clock? We’re off of 441, just outside the park. I’ll have someone text you the directions.”

“No problem,” Leonard says, and the director disconnects.

When he goes back to the bedroom, Kirk is wide awake with the covers thrown off and is displaying an impressive erection, beautifully lit by the early morning sun.

“I knew you were going to do that,” he says, eyes narrow and shrewd. “You can be counted on to act against your own interests, even if it’s only for one night.” Leonard doesn’t argue, because he can’t; Kirk is right, and there won’t be another night with him any more than there’ll be a condo in Atlanta.

“It’s okay.” Kirk grabs his wrist and pulls him back into bed. “Consolation prize.”

Kirk wraps around him so that his erection jabs at Leonard’s groin, provoking until it gets the response it wants. They don’t kiss because one or the other of them is leery of morning breath, but there are hands and warm, indolent thrusting, the wonders of nocturnal tumescence making up for poor aim.

“Is it okay if I come on you?” Kirk asks, palming his balls, and Leonard grunts a yes. Kirk comes with a little thrust of his lower back and rubs his slick, sticky come onto Leonard, whose cock is enjoying the party being thrown for it by Kirk's hands and still-impressive erection.

He tries to hold on but his resolve is weak this early in the morning, and he makes more noise than he intends to, so that Kirk chuckles into his ear and holds him until he softens. Leonard’s an early riser but, narcotized with pleasure, he lapses into a dream-filled semi-consciousness with the covers off in a tangle of sticky limbs.

When he wakes again, it’s a little after 9:00 and he’s alone in bed. The bedroom door is open and he smells coffee and fried things. He stumbles into the shower and washes off the tokens of last night and this morning, wishing he could shed the layer of memory as easily.

He comes downstairs in sweats, bare feet and wet hair to find Kirk standing at his stove, holding a spatula.

“Soy bacon?” Kirk says, stepping away from the griddle to greet him with a kiss. “That’s, like, California-bad. I thought you Southerners knew where to source all the really nasty pork products.”

“My advisor was a cardiologist.”

Kirk gives him a taunting look while piling a half-pound of scrambled eggs on his plate.

They eat at the kitchen table, Kirk putting away large quantities of food and strong coffee and talking about how much he’s looking forward to going home. The circles are gone from under his eyes, and Leonard’s all ready to preach the benefits of modest caffeine and cholesterol consumption when Kirk goes for his fourth mug and asks if they can take it out on the porch.

The chilly dampness of early spring is still in the air, but the sun is starting to burn it off. A pair of cardinals are building a nest in the mountain laurel near the house, and the creek is rushing with upland rainfall. On mornings like this Leonard has no regretful thoughts of hipster lofts in Atlanta, especially when Kirk wraps one hand around his mug of coffee and the other around Leonard’s hips as he leans on the rail.

“So,” he says, looking down into the valley. “The shoot should be over in five weeks. How soon can you get time off and come to L.A.?”

Leonard stiffens with shock, his mind going blank. As he recovers his first thoughts are angry, that Kirk is changing the rules of the game on him.

“I--” he begins, and stops. Any sentence that begins with I is fraught with danger. After stammering for a few more moments, he settles on, “What would be the point?” It’s ruder than he intends, but gets the general tenor of his thoughts.

Kirk's shoulders hitch up in a faint shrug. “To have a good time. To let your friend the big-shot actor get you into places you might not get into otherwise. So you can compare and see which time zone it’s better to fuck me in.”

Leonard laughs, relaxing. “It’s a nice offer, and I appreciate it. But--” He stops again.

“But you don’t think I’ll follow through, and if I do you have no intention of coming to the coast anyway.” Kirk plants an elbow on the railing and turns his body toward Leonard. “At the risk of repeating my assholery from last night, I think it’s time you tried something else.  _Anything_. This--” he waves around “--is nice and safe and it’s going to be nice and safe for another forty years, and then you’ll be dead. I’m not asking you to rearrange your life,” he says, when Leonard starts to object. “It’s just a long weekend in L.A. No, you know what? Never mind talking about it now, because we’re just going to waste a nice morning. Save up your good objections for when I call. Because I will.”

Leonard gives a half-hearted smile and a nod and doesn’t believe him.

By the time Kirk has worked his way through the pot of coffee and showered it’s late morning. Leonard offers to drive him up to Tallulah Falls because, to his shock, Kirk hasn’t seen it yet, in spite of having been in the area for three weeks. Kirk insists they take Leonard’s old beater of a pickup truck, after insisting that he put on a pair of faded jeans and a plaid shirt.

“Could you at least let me know what fantasy you’re having me play out, here?”

“Hard to say,” Kirk says, sliding a hand into Leonard’s back pocket. “I have so many, I can’t keep track.”

To Leonard’s surprise and slight disappointment, it doesn’t devolve from there back into bed. Kirk gathers up his few things and Leonard watches him exit with a pang.

They drive out Old Highway 441 past fallow fields and quiet weekday houses. “Look,” Kirk says, pointing at the turnoff for the town of Hollywood, “no wonder I feel at home.” In truth, Kirk looks so at ease in the seat of the pickup that he could slide right out and into the stands at the Speedway. Maybe it’s Kirk’s chameleon talent, or maybe it’s just that Leonard’s eyes are adjusting to him.

The ball cap and sunglasses go on before they get out at the Falls. Leonard has to steer Kirk away from the magnetic attraction of the signs announcing  _Suspension Bridge_ and  _Danger, access with permit only_ at the head of the Hurricane Falls staircase.

“No,” he says, like he’s talking to a dog. “No cliffs. Do you know what kind of contract that director of yours made me sign?”

They walk instead up the easy North Rim Trail, Kirk straying a little too close to the edge for Leonard’s comfort. There’s a good amount of spring rainfall in the falls, which is actually not one waterfall but five, strung out like jewels down the winding ravine.

“This is beautiful,” Kirk says. “I’m surprised we didn’t film up here. Tony would have had me rappel down the side.”

“Would you have done it?”

Kirk shrugs. “Sure.”

Leonard falls into a trance listening to the white noise of water. Kirk gives him a little bump with his elbow.

“This isn’t what I was talking about before, you know. I wasn’t ragging on your life. Not your job, or your daughter, or Georgia, or anything like that. I actually envy your life, and I don’t mean that in some Marie Antoinette oblivious asshole way. You’ve got it stripped down to the bare essentials. You’ve figured out how not to want things you think you can’t have.” Kirk picks up a rock from the path and throws it, a quick, athletic snap. It clears the shrubs clinging to the side of the gorge and plummets, soundless, into the water below.

“Don’t turn me into some kind of Appalachian Thoreau,” Leonard grumbles. "It's called life. Time goes on and your options narrow, and you accept that or you turn into a bitter old bastard with a drinking problem that no one can stand to be around." The wind whips up and blows last autumn's leaves around, and Leonard feels old and melodramatic, but it's true: he should know, it almost happened to him. "Why do you care, anyway?"

"I don't know." The impish light is back in Kirk's eyes, the one Leonard is already beginning to associate with sex and meddling. "I like puzzles. I like having to justify myself to you. I like having to  _try_. And I’d like to prove you wrong. About not getting those things, I mean.” While Leonard is trying to parse all that, Kirk slaps him on the shoulder and starts back down the trail “You up for lunch? I’m still hoping for some of those nasty pork products.”

Leonard takes him to the Hollywood Diner as a joke, although the food there is pretty good. When they walk in, Kirk cases the joint like a hit man, but it’s mostly full of contractors and sheriff’s deputies and other people who likely don’t read _People_ magazine. Kirk inhales pulled pork and sweet tea and pecan pie and Leonard counts down the minutes with glances at his cell phone like a high-tech Cinderella.

"So, Kirk says, running his finger over the red-white-and-blue ribbon tied around the bud vase, "how'd you end up here?"

It's a question Leonard's been waiting for for the last 24 hours, but he still doesn't have an easy answer.

"My ex has her MBA. She worked for a medical insurance company while I was doing my internship, and she got interested in the business side of clinical practice. Her idea was to start a chain of clinics in rural areas, especially ones with older populations. Her folks retired here, we liked the area, so--"  _Perfect solution_. He remembers Joss's bright eyes.  _And mom and dad can watch Jo, and we can work together._

_Side by side._

"And then your marauding dick had to go and spoil everything."

"For God's sake, will you--" Leonard shoots a nervous look at the next table, but the guys sitting there are speaking Spanish and ignoring them. "If it had just been-- Well, it's for damn sure I could have kept it in my pants, if that's all it took." He's getting a little tired of Kirk's flashes of insight, which are as accurate as they're probably recreational.

Kirk just nods, not pushing his luck, and goes back to eating pie.

The server comes by to freshen Kirk's cup of coffee for the tenth time and pauses, smoothing her uniform skirt and wearing an unmistakable  _I can't believe I'm doing this, I'm such a dork_  expression.

"Um, excuse me? I'm sorry, but--" she points at a gaggle of waitstaff by the cash register, and let's it all out in a single breath. "I don't want to bother you but we were wondering...are you Jim Kirk?"

Kirk turns slowly and takes off his sunglasses, tucking them, unhurried, in his pocket. It's a perfect vignette of a gesture, James Dean or maybe somebody more contemporary.

"Yeah," he drawls, "you got me," and turns the blue eyes on her full force.

She flushes, and her smile lights up her face. It's a combination of embarrassment and glee, completely innocent and completely unlike the reaction Leonard had to Kirk as a man. Leonard can see the power this visitation has, transforming her boring workday through fame into glamor and social capital.

She gestures the rest of the staff over, and in minutes Kirk is signing autographs, posing for cell phone photos. Pretty soon the patrons start to shuffle over with face-saving excuses-- _If I don't get your autograph, my wife will kill me_ \--and finally the manager shows up and receives Kirk's request for a half-dozen pies to take back to the set like he's been asked for his eldest daughter's hand in marriage. There's a complex negotiation, Kirk insisting on payment and the manager pleading honor and Southern hospitality, and finally settles for Kirk's promise to send a personally autographed 8 x 10 to go over the cash register. Leonard nearly has to drag Kirk out bodily to make sure they're not late.

As soon as they're out the door, he starts to apologize. "I am so god-damned sorry. I thought, this little place--"

"You thought that because you're immune to my mutant Fame Rays, that everyone else is as well." He watches Leonard buckle the stack of pies into the back seat. "Heh. Good idea. Mine, I mean, buying those; total crew bribery."

As he pulls out of the parking lot, Leonard sees the loitering remnants of Kirk's fan club in the rear view mirror. "Is that what it's like for you? All the time?"

"No, there are other options--being a dick, for one, but I try not to do that. Living in L.A. helps; only tourists are uncool around celebrities. And when it happens--I don't mind it, really. Did you see that girl?" He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "It's a really easy way to make someone happy."

"Is that what you were doing?" Leonard asks, clutching the steering wheel. "Last night, I mean?"

"Oh, Jesus. Are you rewriting history already? You had fun and now you need to turn it into something awful, like my pathetic inborn need to please people. You know what?" Kirk says, loudly, over the roar of wind from the open window. "You fucked me; deal with it. Own it. Use it to pick up guys, I don't care, just--hot ones, make sure they're hot. Jesus  _fuck_." He slaps his hand against the door. "You spend way too much time inside your own head, you know?"

He sounds exasperated, not angry--maybe not even that, just enjoying the rant. But it satisfies the little bridge-burning  _you blew it_  itch inside of Leonard, the one that was going to bother him if he let Kirk out of the car with smiles and that open invitation still hanging between them.

They spend the rest of the ride trying to figure out the cryptic directions sent over by Tony the Director’s assistant. With considerable help from satellites, Leonard finds the private road off of 441 where the movie people are set up. There are trailers and generators and a lot of noise and people standing around.

A guy with a bullhorn waves them into a makeshift parking lot on the grass. Tony jogs up to them as Kirk gets out of the truck.

“Right on time,” Tony says with a nod at Leonard. He looks his leading man up and down. Kirk’s well rested, well fed, and well fucked and looks all three, though Leonard hopes the last one is obvious to his eyes only.

“How are you feeling?” he asks Kirk, without warmth.

“Ready for whatever you want to throw at me,” Kirk says, busting out the incandescent smile. Leonard knows by now that it isn’t always sincere, but around here it’s clearly what pays the bills, and Tony nods his approval and jerks a thumb over his shoulder and barks “Makeup!” and Kirk trots off.

Halfway to the trailer, Kirk’s intercepted by a gorgeous, heavily made-up woman wearing a parka over a flowered dress. She wraps both hands around Kirk’s arm and reaches up to push back his hair and inspect his forehead. Leonard does his best to yank his eyes back to Tony, who’s talking nonstop.

“My next film, I may be hiring an on-set doctor. A couple of the stars have a heart attack or two between them. You available?” He’s already writing a number on the back of a business card.

“Uh, thanks, but no. I’ve got a full-time job here.” Tony gives him a disbelieving look, one that makes him want to ask  _What the fuck is wrong with Georgia?_  while in his peripheral vision he sees the actress leading Kirk to the trailer by their joined hands.

“Okay, well. If you change your mind, call me.” He actually makes the thumb-and-little-finger phone gesture.

The door to the makeup trailer swings closed, and with it ends this odd little chapter in Leonard's life.

He goes home and washes the sheets and puts the breakfast dishes away.

For the next few weeks he tries to avoid the Internet button on his cell phone, and mostly succeeds. Chris Chapel asks him for the tenth and final time what Jim Kirk was really like; Jo is briefly mad at him for not getting an autograph, but is mollified by the little satin baseball jacket with  _Tallulah Tigers_  on the back that arrives without a card.

Leonard caves in and gets Internet at home, mostly so he can keep track of his little girl's online life while being horrified that she has one. He looks at medical journals and international papers and  _not_ at gossip sites. He browses condo listings in Atlanta and is scandalized by the prices.

He reminds himself that this is the life made for himself, at the intersection of genetics and choices and the wonderful accident of Jo's birth. It's nothing to lament or be ashamed of, and he slightly resents the shadows cast by Jim Kirk's California sun.

At five weeks, the event horizon for whatever might have happened if Leonard hadn't been stubborn and cowardly, he gives in to temptation and types Kirk's name into the search engine.

_JTK soaks up the sun poolside with Tallulah co-star_   
_Comedian Dave Segura Arrested for Drug Possession at LAX_   
_Kirk attached to star in Tony Branch Adaptation of 'Chronic City'_

He's reading about the book mentioned in the last article, thinking it sounds interesting and he'll maybe order it online, when his cell phone rings, scaring the shit out of him.

"Hey." It's Kirk, of course. "Told you I'd call."

"Yeah, you did."

"So I just wanted to know exactly when you're coming out here. Assuming, of course, you're not sitting in the living room of your hot condo with your hot lawyer boyfriend." Kirk's good-natured mockery comes through the phone loud and clear.

"Assuming I  _am_ sitting here with him, what should I tell him is the purpose of the visit?"

"Oh, you know--hang out. Use the hot tub. Also that thing with the timezones and the fucking, remember that? And a tour of the trauma center at UCLA. And you'll probably want to go to the beach; everybody from the East Coast does, even though I tell them the water is fucking cold."

"Wait, what was that second-to-last thing?"

"UCLA Medical Center? Yeah, they said they could give us a private tour. Seemed like your beat. They're probably expecting me to give money, and maybe I will. It seems I've developed an interest in the medical profession."

Kirk can't possibly know that it's been Leonard's dream to work at a first-class teaching hospital, any more than he can know that Leonard's fallen asleep for the last five weeks thinking about Kirk naked in embarrassingly cliched California locations.

Kirk does know that what he's asking is possible, or he wouldn't be calling just to score a point; he may be an asshole, but he's not  _that_  kind of asshole. Leonard's got plenty of accrued vacation time, there are direct flights from Hartsfield to LAX, and if he arranges it right he won't even have to miss a week with Jo.

"Are you freaking out?" Kirk's voice is husky and familiar. "I know, it's pretty momentous, taking a short vacation to the West Coast. Breath into a paper bag if you need to."

"Oh, stuff it," Leonard says, while some uncontrolled part of his mind thinks how easy it is to book airline tickets online. "If I say I'll talk to my boss about it tomorrow, will you leave me in peace?"

"No promises," Kirk says, and disconnects.


End file.
